All Forum Posts by: Gargi Keeling

Quote from @Gargi Keeling:

Quote from @Sean Beyrouthy:

Hello everyone! My partners and I closed on our first deal in Chester, PA and I have been fortunate enough to be in control of the accounting. We have decided to use Stessa and it seems simple, but I do have a couple questions on how to track certain information since it is linked to our business account and every charge shows up in the transaction tab in Stessa. For things like personal-deposits, credit card cash back payments, store reimbursement for products, how should these be categorized? Additionally, how do I show my acquisition and closing costs correctly too? Any help would be appreciated! 

If you try to categorize every txn, you'll go nuts. I just eyeball the list in the txn history, select all the ones that don't fall into income or expenses - and DELETE.

For acquisition - you can create the property in

  https://app.stessa.com/web3/properties and it should ask you for the relevant info. 

 THIS. I do the same thing. Just focus on income and expenses and delete the rest (transfers, refunds, interest earned, etc)

Quote from @Jim Rivell:

might be best taking this to Stessa Support

 Good luck with that. They don't offer ANY way to contact them anymore. The chat feature has to option to start a new case/thread. Something seems fishy there.

Quote from @Sean Beyrouthy:

Hello everyone! My partners and I closed on our first deal in Chester, PA and I have been fortunate enough to be in control of the accounting. We have decided to use Stessa and it seems simple, but I do have a couple questions on how to track certain information since it is linked to our business account and every charge shows up in the transaction tab in Stessa. For things like personal-deposits, credit card cash back payments, store reimbursement for products, how should these be categorized? Additionally, how do I show my acquisition and closing costs correctly too? Any help would be appreciated! 

If you try to categorize every txn, you'll go nuts. I just eyeball the list in the txn history, select all the ones that don't fall into income or expenses - and DELETE.

For acquisition - you can create the property in

  https://app.stessa.com/web3/properties and it should ask you for the relevant info. 

Quote from @Ketan Parekh:

I landed up disconnecting the auto sync and landed up manually adding the transactions as needed. Also if you have appfolio integrates you land up getting double entry.

I"m probably going to do the same thing for 2 reasons:

1) My paypal and venmo accounts stopped syncing earlier this year due to MFA error but I can log in just fine to these accounts directly. I keep getting 'maximum attempts reached' error

2) I saw a bunch of duplicate entries from some financial institutions. 

It's a real pain since the whole point of using their software was to automate. Very frustrating. 

@Richard Purdy put at least some of it into an interest bearing account so you have a cushion. 5% is easily achievable with many savings banks. Apart from the obvious advice to find cheap properties to buy with hard money, why not consider house hacking by renting properties and then subletting or doing Airbnb, if the municipality allows it? You can run the numbers and see if it works out.

We've been having a lot of difficulty with a section 8 tenant that was already living in the property we acquired less than a year ago. We have done our best to remediate issues but the place is filthy and occupied by six people. So we cannot make all the repairs until they move out. The tenant demanded an inspection from the housing authority and given that we can't remediate all the issues, they are no longer subsidizing her housing.

So she put herself in a bad position and now has to move out. We gave her more than sufficient notice and she is delinquent on her April rent. We would like to get her settled into a more suitable property but she claims she can't find one. Can somebody help us navigate this situation so we can move on?

By the way, before you assume anything about us, we fully remodeled the downstairs unit and have a wonderful tenant in there.

@Mike Bonomo Did you ever find an eviction attorney? I'm looking for one in upstate NY, too. Section 8 tenant was given notice and hasn't moved out, failed to pay this month's rent and now threatening 'court'. Looking for a good, effective referral.

Hi Nick - Looks like you put a lot of effort into the rehab. I'm from the area and I'm surprised you paid so much but did you really get it appraised for $525K? Wow - I guess central NJ has changed since I left! 

I'm looking to buy a place for my parents in the area - can you share your private lender and contractor info w/ me? You can see my local investment on my page. TNX

Investment Info:

Small multi-family (2-4 units) buy & hold investment.

Purchase price: $160,000
Cash invested: $44,000

UNIMPRESSED w/ our buyers agent and lawyer. So many details of the property were not disclosed (flaws, rehab requirements, tenant details). And they didn't give us any security deposit for the current tenant in the closing. Now the tenant needs to leave and they are understandably upset that they won't get their deposit returneThis place needed work

What made you interested in investing in this type of deal?

We have family in the area so we have some boots on the ground. And price point is feasible with cash flow potential. Don't expect a lot of appreciation.

How did you find this deal and how did you negotiate it?

Searched on Zillow, got recommendation for realtor from my realtor in NJ. I told my NJ realtor about the poor service provided by this agent.

How did you finance this deal?

Standard mortgage loan

What was the outcome?

We know the area through family, got handymen and contractors in there for rehab. Solved water issues promptly, etc.

Lessons learned? Challenges?

Trust and verify. We should have dug deeper into details like security deposit. And we shouldn't have trusted out agent w/ the walkthrough.

Did you work with any real estate professionals (agents, lenders, etc.) that you'd recommend to others?

Yes, standard realtor - wasn't forthcoming about property details and tenant situation.

Investment Info:

Small multi-family (2-4 units) buy & hold investment.

Purchase price: $160,000
Cash invested: $44,000

UNIMPRESSED w/ our buyers agent and lawyer. So many details of the property were not disclosed (flaws, rehab requirements, tenant details). And they didn't give us any security deposit for the current tenant in the closing. Now the tenant needs to leave and they are understandably upset that they won't get their deposit returned.

This place needed work. One unit occupied (Section 8 tenant) and other was vacant, dilapidated. We rehab'd the vacant unit and rented to a very responsible tenant w/ their mother (who unfortunately, smokes....even when we prohibited this in the lease). Section 8 tenant is struggling w/ payments and has 5 kids to support. The place is filthy and unsurprisingly, infested w/ roaches. We can't fix the roach problem until they move out. Hopefully they will find another place so we can start over.

What made you interested in investing in this type of deal?

We have family in the area so we have some boots on the ground. And price point is feasible with cash flow potential. Don't expect a lot of appreciation.

How did you find this deal and how did you negotiate it?

Searched on Zillow, got recommendation for realtor from my realtor in NJ. I told my NJ realtor about the poor service provided by this agent.

How did you finance this deal?

Standard mortgage loan

What was the outcome?

We know the area through family, got handymen and contractors in there for rehab. Solved water issues promptly, etc.

Lessons learned? Challenges?

Trust and verify. We should have dug deeper into details like security deposit. And we shouldn't have trusted out agent w/ the walkthrough.

Did you work with any real estate professionals (agents, lenders, etc.) that you'd recommend to others?

Yes, standard realtor - wasn't forthcoming about property details and tenant situation.